Haruki Murakami Quotes

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.

To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.

The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.

A picture can say 1000 words but it can also inspire you to write 1000 more.

Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

I keep trying to define 'poetry,' but it's so difficult.

Remarks are not literature.

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

I read mostly poetry.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

There are no original ideas. There are only original people.

All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.

Art is more engaging that propaganda.

Words are but pictures of our thoughts.